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A question for you. What would you do if you were not waiting? It came up in a coaching session this week. It is a painful question because as coaches quite often wait. We wait to post. We wait for clients. We wait for the perfect. We wait to have our website done.
We wait to have our posts all sorted. We wait. We wait. We wait.
Where Clients Actually Come From
Clients don’t come from more content. They don’t come from more certificates. They don’t come from more consuming. They come from taking action. They come from you being visible and people knowing that you are there. And that could be as simple as a referral. It could be content that you have already got. It could be conversations in real life with real people telling them you are a life coach or business coach, or a teaching coach, or just telling them that you are a coach and that you can help them.
It could be answering a DM. It could be an inquiry on your website. There are so many ways that clients come. Waiting is not one of them. You do not need more content. You do not need more qualifications. You do not need more time. You just need to do it.
The Cost of Waiting
What would you do if you were not waiting? What would you create? I have just come off the coaches momentum panel and we had some really great examples there. It was all about community and being authentic. Waiting is not being authentic. We wait for the perfect moment.
It is Christmas time, so we think we will wait until after Christmas. Then that runs into January. Maybe that is not the best time. Then it is February and before we know it, half the year is gone. Before we know it, we are back to Christmas again. So what if you just took imperfect action and you just did it?
That is what quite often trips us up. We get some momentum and then we are doing some things, and then suddenly we decide we have to wait. We have to wait until after that holiday. We have to wait until after this piece of work is done. We have to wait. That, unfortunately does not help with our pipeline and it does not help with our system.
Planning, Deadlines and Implementation
When you are planning, do you put deadlines on it? Do you create those time containers for yourself? When we used to work in corporate or worked for other people, we had deadlines. As coaches running our own businesses, quite often we do not. So is deadline something that can help? Or do you spend all your time learning and then never implementing?
You get these great ideas. You might have pages and pages of notes. What are you doing to implement? Quite often these things do not actually work until you put them out in the world and you see what works. Then you can tweak it.
You Wait For Perfection
When you are promoting a panel, it is great to have a combined artwork. People also like to have their own individual artworks to send out. This is something I learned from my panel, and I would have never known that if I had not put it out into the world.
So what is it that you are doing that you are not getting feedback on because you are not putting it out into the world? Are you waiting to reply to that DM because you need the perfect bit of evidence to show them? In the meantime, they have gone with another coach.
You need to take action even if it is not perfect. If you have been a listener, you know that perfection does not happen. It will not happen until you put it out there.
Be Out There
You need to put it out there. You need to get your work into the world. You need to tell people that you are a coach, even when you do not feel ready. Even when confidence drops or things feel slower than they were.
It will not improve unless you start talking to people. The easiest way is one person at a time. That could be an online networking event. That could be a post. That could be reaching out to your email list that you have not spoken to in a while.
You also need to follow up. Only 6% of people are ready to buy right now. Others need nurturing. They need to know more about you. They need to hear you speak or see you again somewhere. If you are not having conversations, it is hard to get clients. It can happen through referrals, though it is far more consistent when you get out there and talk to people.
Do not try to do everything. Pick one. One client. One offer. One simple way to connect.
Email is often the easiest because it lowers the barrier. So what is your one thing? What is one way you can connect today?
Start Looking Ahead
No doubt you have a goal for the year. It is April. There are 8 months left. If you fast forward to December and everything has worked, what would that version of you say to yourself today? What would you be thinking and feeling? What would you not have been doing?
Would you have stopped consuming so much? Would you have stopped over planning? Or maybe you would have started planning properly with timelines and action steps.
Links
Contacts
What Are You Waiting For?
What are the 3 conversations you need to have this week? Go and have them. If you want to learn more, I am running panels and events. You can check them out and see what is coming up.
You can do this. You have got this. You just need to stop waiting.
Listen to the full episode of Small Business Talk episode 343.
You can also find the video versions of the Small Business Talk Episodes on YouTube.
